This paper is an audience research on the TV drama series of Woju (蝸居), with focus on the making of neoliberal subject of Chinese college graduates. This drama series, which began airing in July 2009, made the term “woju” a public idiom, which now refers to the cramped living environment of middle-lower class in Chinese cities. The huge gap between educated young adult’s aspirations and their living and working conditions is routinely discussed and dramatized in media. However, despite the association frequently made by the media between Woju and the social and cultural problems of Chinese crony capitalism, such as corruption, moral crisis and economic inequalities, in my informants’ reading of the stories and characters, moral codes and concerns did not prevail at all. Instead they embrace a cosmopolitan way of life by negotiating a subject position distant from the social and moral conflicts. It features a neoliberal subject always looking on the bright side of urban life and practicing self-enabling/ managing techniques. This imaginary self is firmly situated in an uneven landscape of national space, including two real-imagined worlds: the world of hinterland/ hometown in which prestige rests on political power and wealth, and the world of central cities in which prestige rests on individual effort in market competition.

This paper is an audience research on the TV drama series of Woju (蝸居), with focus on the making of neoliberal subject of Chinese college graduates. This drama series, which began airing in July 2009, made the term “woju” a public idiom, which now refers to the cramped living environment of middle-lower class in Chinese cities. The huge gap between educated young adult’s aspirations and their living and working conditions is routinely discussed and dramatized in media. However, despite the association frequently made by the media between Woju and the social and cultural problems of Chinese crony capitalism, such as corruption, moral crisis and economic inequalities, in my informants’ reading of the stories and characters, moral codes and concerns did not prevail at all. Instead they embrace a cosmopolitan way of life by negotiating a subject position distant from the social and moral conflicts. It features a neoliberal subject always looking on the bright side of urban life and practicing self-enabling/ managing techniques. This imaginary self is firmly situated in an uneven landscape of national space, including two real-imagined worlds: the world of hinterland/ hometown in which prestige rests on political power and wealth, and the world of central cities in which prestige rests on individual effort in market competition.